Dozens of House lawmakers want the Obama administration to release the secret “black budget” used to fund intelligence agencies. A bipartisan group of 62 members of Congress wrote President Obama a letter on Wednesday asking him to release the fiscal 2015 spending levels for 16 federal spy agencies when he delivers the rest of his budget to Congress on March 4. “The current practice of providing no specificity whatsoever regarding the overall budget requests for each intelligence agency falls woefully short of basic accountability requirements,” the legislators wrote. “As you develop your fiscal year 2015 budget, we strongly urge you...

U.S. spy agencies target their counterintelligence operations on Israel along with Iran and China, among other countries, a budget summary for the secret National Intelligence Program reveals. The $52.6 billion "black budget" for fiscal 2013 for the 16 U.S. spy agencies was obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the newspaper reported Thursday. The budget summary, formally known as the Congressional Budget Justification for the National Intelligence Program, revealed that counterintelligence operations "are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel," according to The Washington Post. Snowden, who has been granted...

U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community... The summary...

WASHINGTON - An independent investigation has found that imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took advantage of secrecy and badgered congressional aides to help slip items into classified bills that would benefit him and his associates. The finding comes from Michael Stern, an outside investigator hired by the House Intelligence Committee to look into how Cunningham was able to carry out the scheme. Stern is working with the committee to fix vulnerabilities in the way top-secret legislation is written, said congressional officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the committee still is being briefed on Stern's findings. Cunningham's case...